On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Nishanth Aravamudan <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi David, > > On 20.09.2012 [17:50:52 +0100], David Lee wrote: >> Cobbler version: 2.0.11 (actually 2.0.11-2 from RPM) >> All systems: RHEL 5.8 >> >> >> [Preliminary: I realise our cobbler version is a little old. I'd >> rather not have to upgrade right now, but if it really would make a >> substantial difference to the problem I am about to describe, that >> could be done.] >> >> We install RHEL 5.8 on many IBM boxes, which are all very similar. In >> particular there are four ethernet ports on the system itself, and a >> separate board with two 10-Gig ports. >> >> The first ethernet port is our provisioning network, over which >> cobbler runs. During installation, it seems to call this "eth2". But >> after installation it almost always comes up as "eth0". (That's OK >> (although I don't understand it!) but it might interact slightly with >> the real problem below.) Moving on... >> >> After installation, the four system ethernet ports usually get >> assigned names eth0, eth1, eth2 and eth3, usually in order. (The >> cobbler/provisioning interface seems to get "eth0" always.) The two >> 10-Gig ports get assigned names eth4 and eth5... usually. >> >> But occasionally (perhaps 10% or slightly more) an installation ends >> up with a different mapping of names to ports. (If we then >> re-install, it usually gets the expected mapping.) That is a problem >> when one is (re-)installing machines in a farm of machines that are >> supposed to be the same. > > So a couple of questions spring to mind. > > 1) Is the naming somehow critical to your application? I assume so, > because I'm not sure why it's relevant otherwise. > > 2) If you want static naming of interfaces, I believe the right way of > doing this is custom udev rules (which you might install via cobbler). > > 3) I think the normal way for this to work is to always use the MAC > address to identify the physical port. > >> I realise that "cobbler system" has a "--interface" capability. But I >> don't see a way for that to be used to map specific names to specific >> hardware. >> >> I make no claims to understand the depths and intricacies of >> "/etc/modprobe.conf", "/etc/sysconfig/hwconf", kudzu, etc. But is >> there a way (or common practice) somehow to pre-populate various >> things with relevant information for the mapping of generated "eth*" >> names onto particular ethernet ports? > > This isn't really a Cobbler specific question, afaict. I would look into > udev rules, probably, if relevant. > > Thanks, > Nish >
This problem is solved when you move from ethX designation to the new p32pX designations (keyed to bus locations) - I don't know if that is available outside of Fedora yet. try yum info biosdevname - see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ConsistentNetworkDeviceNaming _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
